Individuals (using Solar City and his new solar shingles) will be the critical source of most power generation in years to come. Archaic, expensive and destructive forms of energy creation like coal burning, nuclear generation, and gas guzzling will soon be over as we convert our fleets of road vehicles and endless sprawl to solar and energy-driven cars (hence the Tesla car company) and off-grid suburban ‘bliss’.

SpaceX and the ‘Mission to Mars’ seemed too much like a fairy tale to me, but using an ambitious space program to secure support from different levels of government gave him the ability to pursue a seemingly less ambitious program of implementing a global network of satellites for Internet distribution.